Ekatva · Five days
Ekatva at The Mirage
five days in an artists' village in the Dhauladhar foothills
A five-day edition for a group of twenty, at The Mirage in Andretta — a heritage homestay that happens to already contain all four of Ekatva's doorways without needing to import a single one: a working pottery village for Making, a bamboo-grove yogashala for Stillness, sunrise ridgelines and waterfalls for Wonder, and a table built for family-style dinners for Love.
Preliminary. This edition is under discussion with The Mirage. Dates, room allocation and facilitator travel are to be confirmed — what follows is the working draft of the programme.
The venue
Why this venue
Not a backdrop, a village
Andretta is not a generic retreat backdrop rented for the occasion. It is a seventy-year-old artists' colony built around Andretta Pottery, India's oldest pottery studio, two minutes' walk from the property.
The Mirage itself is three restored mud cottages holding exactly ten double bedrooms. A full-property buyout sits at almost precisely twenty guests — so this design assumes the group has the place to itself: no parallel programming, no other guests to work around. That suits Ekatva's single-track principle better than a generic hotel ever could.
The five days use the property and the village as they already are, rather than building a stage on top of them. Pottery becomes the Making doorway. The bamboo-grove yogashala becomes the daily Stillness anchor. The sunrise hill walk and the waterfall hike become Wonder. And the family-style dinners the property already runs become the setting for Love, and for closing.
- Venue
- The Mirage — a boutique heritage homestay, mirageandretta.com
- Where
- Andretta, Kangra Valley, Himachal Pradesh — in the foothills of the Dhauladhar range
- Property
- Three restored Himachali mud cottages — the Main House, the White House and the Garden Cottage
- Rooms
- Ten double bedrooms; a full buyout is what makes the group size twenty
- On site
- Heated pool, steam room, orchard and garden reading nooks, table tennis, badminton
- Village
- Andretta Pottery (founded 1961), Atelier Lalmitti ceramics, the Sobha Singh Art Gallery
The design spine, already standing
Four doors, already here
Ekatva's four doors are the same in this edition as in the one-day pilot. What changes is that Andretta supplies them rather than the programme having to construct them.
Door I — Love
Love & compassion
A practice of real listening, and family-style dinners at one long table, morning and night, for five days.
Here: the Main House dining roomDoor II — Making
Flow & making
Hands in clay at India's oldest pottery studio, two minutes' walk from the front gate. No prior skill needed or expected.
Here: Andretta PotteryDoor III — Stillness
Contemplative stillness
The same half-hour sit at 7am each morning, so that stillness becomes the week's rhythm rather than an interruption in it.
Here: the bamboo-grove yogashalaDoor IV — Wonder
Awe & nature
Dawn breaking over the Dhauladhar range, a waterfall and a swim in its pool, and a night under open sky.
Here: the ridge and the waterfallThe shape of the week
The arc across five days
One movement per day, in an order that does not ask anybody to feel something before they have understood it — and does not leave the understanding as the last word either.
Day 1
Arrive
Guests arrive, settle in, and share a first meal together. No formal programme yet — only the beginning of a shared rhythm.
Day 2
Understand
The intellectual case for non-separation — philosophy, science, poetry — with the mind fully engaged.
Day 3
Wonder
A day built around scale: sunrise over the Dhauladhar range, a waterfall hike, a night under open sky.
Day 4
Make
A morning at the potter's wheel and the village art studios — the self loosening its grip through the hands rather than the head.
Day 5
Love & close
A practice of real listening, a closing circle, and a shared departure — ending on connection rather than a final lecture.
Day by day
The five-day programme
Working draft. Session titles, timings and the balance of talk to practice will shift as the programme is confirmed with The Mirage and with the faculty.
Reading the timetable: sessions marked in gold — stillness, wonder, making, practice, circle — are the experiential doorways rather than the argument. Everything in the free-time blocks is available but not programmed.
Through the day
Arrivals
Getting there
Given the group's size, a shared transfer from Dharamshala (Gaggal) airport or Amb Andaura station is worth arranging. The retreat can quietly begin in the taxi rather than after everyone has arrived alone.
4:00 – 5:30 pm
Settling in
Rooms
Across the three cottages — Main House, White House and the Garden Cottage.
5:30 – 6:30 pm
Circle
Welcome circle
On the verandah. Introductions, and one ground rule for the five days: stay with a question a little longer than feels natural, rather than rushing to resolve it.
6:30 – 7:30 pm
Free time
The pool, the steam room, or a first walk
A first quiet walk through the orchard.
7:30 – 9:00 pm
Dinner
Welcome dinner
Family-style, in the Main House dining room.
9:00 pm onward
Unstructured
First bonfire
No agenda, no facilitation — just the group, the fire, and the mountain air.
7:00 – 7:30 am
Stillness
Morning sit
The first of five mornings in the bamboo-grove yogashala — this becomes the daily anchor for the rest of the week.
8:00 – 9:30 am
Breakfast
On the verandah
Unhurried.
9:30 – 10:30 am
Talk
What “not two” actually claims
A plain-language teaching in the Main House living room, among its old photographs and antiques — explaining what Advaita claims, and just as importantly, what it does not.
10:45 – 11:45 am
Dialogue
What the mind does with “no self”
A conversation on what current research into meditation and the brain has found, and what remains genuinely open.
12:00 – 1:00 pm
Free time
The garden's reading nooks
Or simply resting.
1:00 – 2:30 pm
Lunch
Home-cooked, vegetarian, family style
3:00 – 4:15 pm
Panel
Where big ideas meet
A conversation on where physics and this old idea genuinely overlap, and where popular claims overreach the evidence.
4:30 – 5:15 pm
Reading
Words at their limit
A short reading in the garden, and a conversation about language trying to point at what precedes it.
6:00 – 7:00 pm
Free time
Pool, steam room, or the verandah
7:30 pm
Dinner
Something different each night
The property tends toward continental or Asian dishes for dinner.
Evening
Optional
Lamplit journaling
Unfacilitated — a quiet place to write, if anyone wants it.
5:45 – 7:00 am
Wonder
Sunrise hill walk
Mostly silent, guided — watching dawn break over the Dhauladhar range from one of the property's own hiking routes.
7:30 – 9:00 am
Breakfast
Later and slower
After the early start.
9:30 – 10:15 am
Teaching
On awe and the “small self”
A short teaching on what happens to the felt sense of separateness in the presence of something vast.
10:30 am – 12:30 pm
Free morning
The heated pool, the orchard
Or, for those who want it, an optional walk to the nearby Wah Tea Estate.
1:00 – 2:00 pm
Lunch
Lighter
Ahead of the afternoon hike.
2:30 – 5:30 pm
Wonder
Waterfall hike and swim
The day's shared adventure — a hike to a waterfall and a swim in its natural pool.
6:30 – 7:30 pm
Rest
Hot showers, tea, recovery
7:30 pm
Dinner
Family style
8:30 pm onward
Unstructured
Bonfire, or a film under the stars
Closing the day under open sky — no debrief afterward.
7:00 – 7:30 am
Stillness
Morning sit
In the yogashala.
8:00 – 9:00 am
Breakfast
On the verandah
Before the morning at the wheel.
9:30 – 11:30 am
Making
Pottery wheel session
At Andretta Pottery, India's oldest pottery studio, founded in 1961 — hands in clay, no prior skill needed.
11:45 am – 12:45 pm
Walk
A walk through the village's own art
Atelier Lalmitti's ceramics studio, and the Sobha Singh Art Gallery — seeing where the village's art history sits alongside what the group has just made.
1:00 – 2:00 pm
Lunch
Home-cooked, family style
2:30 – 4:30 pm
Making
A second making session
For those who want to keep working at the wheel, or to draw or paint instead, in the White House — the cottage kept for modern art.
5:00 – 5:45 pm
Circle
Sharing circle
On what happened to the sense of “I” while making — not a critique of what got made.
7:30 pm
Feast
A dhaam dinner
The property can serve a traditional Himachali dhaam meal on request — a fitting, communal way to mark the day's work.
Evening
Bonfire
A last fire
With local musicians, if available.
7:00 – 7:30 am
Stillness
Final morning sit
In the yogashala.
8:00 – 9:00 am
Breakfast
Unhurried
9:30 – 10:30 am
Practice
A practice of real listening
A guided compassion practice, or a structured exercise in truly listening to another person, in the garden or yogashala.
10:45 – 11:45 am
Circle
Closing circle
In small groups — each person names one specific place in their life where they will test the week's central idea over the coming month.
12:00 – 12:30 pm
Closing round
Gratitude, silence, or a song
Deliberately no final keynote.
1:00 pm
Lunch
Final lunch
Family style, together, before departures.
Afternoon
Departures
Shared transfer home
Ideally as a group transfer back to Dharamshala or Amb Andaura, so the week's sense of “we” carries through the last car ride too.
Practical notes
If you are coming
Twenty people, one property, five days. The figures below come from the working draft and are subject to confirmation with The Mirage.
- Group size
- Twenty — matching a full buyout of the property's ten double bedrooms across the Main House, White House and Garden Cottage. No other guests on site, and no parallel sessions to choose between.
- Meals
- Family-style in the Main House dining room. Lunch and dinner menus are fixed and shared a day ahead; a traditional Himachali dhaam is available on request and fits well as the Day 4 celebration dinner. Dietary needs to the property well in advance.
- Getting there
- Nearest airport is Dharamshala (Gaggal), about 1.5 hours by taxi, with direct flights from Delhi, Chandigarh and Jaipur. The nearest fast train is Amb Andaura (Vande Bharat from Delhi/Chandigarh), about 3 hours by taxi onward. By road: roughly 11–12 hours from Delhi, 6 from Chandigarh, 5 from Amritsar — a group transfer is strongly worth arranging at these numbers.
- Between sessions
- Heated pool, steam room, table tennis, badminton, board games and the orchard's reading nooks — available in the unscheduled hours built into each day. These do not need programming, only permission to be used.
- If extending
- The Sobha Singh Art Gallery, the Dalai Lama Temple and Norbulingka Institute in McLeod Ganj, and Kangra Fort — all worth knowing about, but kept out of the core five days so the pace does not work against “silence is programmed, not left over.”
- Status
- Working draft — to be confirmed directly with The Mirage on dates, room allocation and facilitator travel.
Three arrangements, one inquiry
The Goa pilot runs as a single day — argument in the morning, experience in the afternoon. This edition runs over five, in a village that supplies the doorways itself. A third arrangement, still only a verbal understanding, would take both forms to Banjara Experiences in the Himalaya — the note on the overview. Both announced editions are deliberately small.
Register your interest once and we will write to you as any edition is confirmed, with dates, venue and faculty.